SOCIAL

Same-sex marriage holds key to Aussie polls

As Australia’s Labor Party launched an election campaign blitzkrieg Sunday, showing its support for marriage equality in the hope of wooing the LGBT community, an advocacy group said support for the issue will be key in deciding the vote of around 1.5 million voters.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has pledged to introduce a marriage-equality bill within 100 days if he is voted to power.

After a social media campaign on gay marriage, Labor Sunday unleashed its glamor arsenal with pop stars like Ricki-Lee, the Veronicas, Fun Machine, and Darren Hayes from Savage Garden supporting the campaign.

The campaign comes in the wake of a national Fairfax Nielsen poll that reported support for same-sex marriages among the 2,545 people it surveyed.

The findings of the poll saw 65 per cent for legalizing same-sex marriage, an 8 per cent improvement since December 2011.

While 75 per cent women threw their weight behind the concept, men were lagging at 55 per cent.

The poll also found younger voters more in favor of such a bill than older ones.

Sixteen per cent said the issue was ‘very important’ for them in deciding which party to vote for.